A Charmed Life (32 page)

He became very ruffled when she asked him for some medicine. “Medicine?” he exclaimed. “We don’t give medicine for what you’ve got in there.” He gestured at Martha’s stomach. She had to explain to him, patiently, that she was pretending to have pains “in there,” so as not to upset her husband, who did not want a baby, and that
if
she had pains in her stomach, it would be reasonable for him to give her medicine. “Colitis,” she suggested. “Let’s say I have colitis. You could give me some bismuth.” But the doctor seemed upset by Martha’s capable manner; she sounded as if she knew his trade better than he did. “I can’t give you bismuth when there’s nothing wrong,” he objected. “Pink pills, then,” said Martha. “The old doctor up here always gave pink pills.” “I don’t have my own pharmacy,” the young man replied coldly. Martha was getting angry. “What do you give people who have imaginary illnesses?” she demanded. “You must have
something.”
Imaginary illnesses, nowadays, he said, were treated with psychology. He evidently thought she was crazy, but in the end, he gave in and wrote her out a prescription for a mild sedative; her nerves, he acknowledged, were on edge.

What Martha disliked most, during the next few days, was playing the part of a semi-invalid. John’s concern was an awful reproach to her; she was reminded, uncomfortably, of how annoyed she had been with him when he had cut his hand. The cut had healed badly, leaving a jagged scar, so that he had a poor opinion of the doctor. It was all she could do to keep him from sending to Trowbridge for another doctor to examine her. This kindness and solicitude, so undeserved, tempted her to reveal everything. She hated to see him deceived in a person, even if it was herself. But when her tongue stirred, to tell him how wrong he was to love her, her lips remained sewed up, as if by a darning needle. And, as she told herself, there was still a chance that she was mistaken.

But of course she was right. She nodded when the doctor told her and was aware of a certain melancholy satisfaction even as her limbs turned icy, sweat broke out on her forehead, and the room reeled and went black. “Nervous strain,” she murmured, gripping the cold metal arms of the chair. The doctor had jumped up, to help her to the bathroom. “I’m not going to throw up. I. never throw up when I’m pregnant.” She blinked the tears from her eyes. He wiped her forehead. All at once, she found herself talking. He was stupid and he could not help her, but she had to tell someone what she was going through. The doctor listened to her account; he seemed less shocked than startled. He had no idea of who she was, evidently; she did not name Miles but spoke only of a “man.” The doctor slowly polished his glasses. “And how many times did this happen?” “Only once—I told you,” said Martha. “I believe in marital fidelity.” The doctor nodded. His portly pink face grew thoughtful. “When was this in relation to your last period?” He looked at the sheet of paper where he had written out the case history. “A day or two after it.” The doctor rubbed his jaw. “It seems like you’re in the clear, then,” he commented. “The chances are a thousand to one against your conceiving at that particular time. You say you had relations with your husband afterward, during the month?” Martha nodded. “The chances are a thousand to one that it’s his child you’re carrying there.” He pointed to Martha’s stomach. “Are you sure?” said Martha. Hope surged up; she leaned forward. “We’re never sure,” said the doctor. “Now and then we get a woman whose ovulation picture is different. You understand, you can’t conceive until there’s an egg there to be fertilized. That doesn’t happen till around the middle of the month, as a general rule.” “But how do I know I’m not an exception?” said Martha. “You don’t know,” said the doctor. “But the chances are that you’re not. Go ahead and have your baby. Forget about the other man. He doesn’t count, statistically.”

Martha sighed. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell myself,” she confessed. “I feel sure it isn’t his, somehow.” “Well, go ahead then. You’re a healthy, normal young woman; you ought to have an easy time. You and your husband want children, you say.” “
I
did,” said Martha sadly. Her shoulders slumped. There was nothing he could tell her that she had not told herself, without avail. He could not give her certainty, only probabilities, which were no help in the lonely instance. She was listening now merely from politeness. “Go ahead, then,” he repeated, trying to infect her with his optimism. “You’re not in love with this other fellow?” “God, no,” said Martha. The doctor laughed at her vehemence. “You’ve got nothing to worry about then. Your husband will never know, unless you tell him. This other man won’t know. No psychological complications.” “You forget about the child,” said Martha, abruptly. “I would never have a normal attitude toward it, myself. I
couldn’t,
not knowing. Don’t you see?” The doctor frowned and straightened a photograph on his desk—his wife and children. “No,” he said. “Even if this had happened later, toward the middle of the month, my advice to you would be the same. Don’t mess around with an illegal operation. They’re dangerous. Your case isn’t as unusual as you seem to think. It happens to lots of women, respectable women too. A few drinks; husband’s away….
You
know. They go ahead and have the baby and everybody’s happy.”

Martha looked skeptical. “I don’t see how they can be,” she said. “Not knowing. Even if it’s a thousand to one.” “Why do you want to ‘know’ so much?” said the doctor, wonderingly. Martha threw out her hands in a helpless gesture. “I just do,” she said. “It seems natural to me to want to know. How would
you
feel if your wife had a child and you weren’t sure whose it was?” “I wouldn’t think about it,” said the doctor, flushing, as if he were uncertain, underneath. He brought his pale fist down lightly on the desk. “You think too much; that’s the trouble with you.” Martha smiled. “Is that your diagnosis?” she said. “Absolutely,” said the doctor, with more assurance. “What do any of us know when it comes down to it? Even in medicine. It’s all a mystery. Why are we here? What does it all mean?” He made a vague, swinging gesture with one arm. “Heredity, what do we know about it?” he continued. “Mendel. Darwin. Then some scientist over in Russia tells us that acquired characters
can
be transmitted. Better not to worry about it. Live your life. ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’” “‘A little learning,’” corrected Martha, automatically. She glanced curiously at the doctor. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him if he knew the Coes. He was not at all a bad sort of person, she decided. He was certainly trying to be kind to her. Yet he took it for granted that she should be willing and able to practice a lifelong deceit on her trusting husband. “You honestly don’t understand how I feel about this?” she said in a troubled tone. The doctor shook his head. “I don’t get it,” he said. “And I don’t think your husband would either,” he added, in a brusquer voice. “He wouldn’t approve of you having a dangerous operation. A criminal operation. You could go to jail.” Martha got up. The thought of John steadied her. “No,” she said. “You’re wrong. He would feel just as I do.” Love made her radiant. “So what will you do?” said the doctor, rising too. “I don’t know,” admitted Martha. “Naturally, I’m scared to death. I’ll have to find someone … ” “I can’t help you, you know,” he said stiffly. “Remember, if you get in any trouble, I advised you against it.” “I know that,” said Martha. “You’ve been very kind, listening.” “You don’t realize how lucky you are,” he burst out. “What if you weren’t married? Then you’d have something to worry about. Think it over.”

He opened the door to the waiting room. John was not there; he had gone off to get the car checked. Martha sat down with an old copy of
Collier’s
and thought of what the doctor had said. She knew what he meant by his last remarks. Next to her, on one of the straight chairs, sat the girl who used to work in the notions shop, big with child. She had been swelling up, month after month, in full sight of the post-office loungers and the old women sitting in their windows on the main street. It was not an unusual case in New Leeds. Every year produced its quota of unmarried mothers. In a few weeks, this girl would go away to have her baby, under the auspices of a charity in Trowbridge, and then she would be back, stolidly pushing her baby carriage down the main highway, while one of the idiots, bearing a special delivery, skipped along beside her, cackling and gabbling. The ceiling of her ambition, if she could not bear the town’s impassive scrutiny, would be to board the infant at the local baby farm, a run-down bungalow with a long rickety porch, across from the iceman’s, which advertised its business by a long clothesline of diapers flapping in the wind. There the babies could be visited, unseen by anyone but the iceman’s incurious family.

Martha sighed, avoiding the girl’s eyes, which rested, without expression, on Martha’s pale, neat hair and gray cloak and polished black walking shoes. The girl did not detect a sister under the skin. It was strange, Martha reflected: these girls seldom considered adoption, except within the family, with a married brother or sister. The idea of escape did not even present itself; they accepted what had happened to them without making any resistance. Beside her, Martha felt guiltily exotic to be even
thinking
of an abortion. “Behave so that thy maxim could be a universal law.” The quixotic thought occurred to her that she
owed
this girl an abortion if she was going to have one herself. But it was not so easy as that. The girl’s figure boldly announced that it was far too late. And, in any case, to get the money for herself would be as much as Martha could manage. To indicate fellow-feeling, she smiled affectionately at the girl, who smiled back shyly, disclosing a missing tooth.

TWELVE

M
ARTHA’S HOPES HAD BEEN
pinned on Dolly. She could not help thinking that fate had arranged for Dolly to be here, now, when she was needed, instead of off somewhere in Europe. The last abortion Martha had heard of had cost six hundred dollars, but that was in New York; she felt sure she could do better in Boston. Five hundred was as much as she dared ask Dolly for, in any case, since she did not know how or when she would be able to pay it back. Even that much, she feared, might make Dolly gulp a little, for Dolly, though inured to being borrowed from, was scaled, Martha knew, to the small loan. Dolly would be horrified to hear the price of an abortion, just as she used to be shocked to hear what Martha paid for her dresses during the period when Martha was acting. She would feel it was one of Martha’s extravagances. Nevertheless, she would have to be asked. If Martha shrank from it, as she drove along the road to Dolly’s cabin, it was not because she expected refusal, but simply from shame at what she would have to reveal. She was going to tell Dolly the truth.

Having nerved herself for this, she was conscious, chiefly, of gratitude when Dolly broke the bad news to her before the first, faltering sentence was fully out of her mouth. She would not have to tell now, thanks be to Heaven. Sandy Gray had been ahead of her. It was Dolly who went red with embarrassment, as though she were making a confession. She had been “helping” Sandy with some improvements in his house. He was putting in heat, for Ellen, who was coming back in a few weeks. Dolly had had to apply to her trustees for an advance. Martha inwardly, so to speak, raised her eyebrows. She and John had had an estimate on heat. Sandy, she calculated, must have nicked Dolly for five hundred dollars, at the very least, if he was only having a floor furnace. She could not but admire his audacity, even while she froze with terror at what this meant for her own predicament. Her mind seemed to split in two, as if she were under an anesthetic that permitted her to watch herself being operated on without feeling any sensation. One part of her was perfectly motionless; the other was listening to Dolly and storing up details and her own commentary, to give John as soon as she got home.

Ellen, she said to herself, impatiently. Ellen will never come back to him. Ellen, in actual fact, if Dolly only knew, was coming back here to stay with the Hubers. Martha had had it from the vicomte, whom she had met just now in the post office. Ellen’s return, according to the vicomte, had a purely commercial motive. Her alimony had been cut off, finally, and she was bringing back some Mexican tin bric-a-brac for him to sell. Her hope was to get the Hubers to set her up in a shop of her own, selling Mexican wares to the summer trade. She had found a man in Laredo who would help her smuggle things across the border. The vicomte, who was usually so bland, had turned very malicious this noon. The Hubers were
his
pigeon. He followed Martha out to the parking space, sprinkling libels as he went, like a fat priest with an aspergill. Had Martha heard about the custody case? Did her friend know Sandy Gray was impotent? Martha made a motion of disbelief. “Oh yes, my dear girl, positively,” the vicomte assured her, with a cough. He had had it, he attested, from Margery at the grille.

This bit of gossip was printed on Martha’s mind as though in blurred type. Warming herself by Dolly’s kerosene heater (a new acquisition, she noted absently), she tried to feel concern for what was happening to her friend. Dolly looked badly, very peaked and worn. Her little breasts seemed sunken under her pale-blue shirt and black sweater. Her eyes were sunk back too, and that bright, inflamed look, as though she had just been crying or having her cheeks scrubbed by an angry nursegirl, had become almost too real. Outside, it was a beautiful day, one of those extraordinary days in November, in which the pale-blue sky and the pines reflected in the ponds created a tropical illusion, of palms and blue lagoons. Dolly should have been out painting, but she stood, hugging herself by the stove, with a lackluster air, like a shut-in. Her collections of seashells and fish skeletons had been dismantled; a bunch of cattails stood awry in a milk bottle. The sun’s rays showed crumbs on the table. In the kitchen, through the open door, Martha could see a gallon jug, half empty, of the vicomte’s cheapest white California. A slight smell of wine was noticeable on Dolly’s breath. She had been giving Sandy lunch, she said, as if explaining herself. He was not working at the scallop place any more. He was trying to write an article.